SHORTS, SANDALS AND A GLASS OF ROSE – CDR CLOS BELLANE ‘ALTITUDE’

Have you already broken out your sandals, shorts and sunnies? I bet you have! But have you also opened your first bottle of rosé this year? No? It’s time. Look outside! Spring is in full swing!

With the beginning of May beautiful sunny weather arrived, and nature rushed to catch up. Within a week London blossomed.

You know, May was always my favourite month of the year. It may have something to do with it being my birthday month, but I think it’s mostly due to the lovely smell. It’s the only time of the year when London smells of “perfume la noche” in the evenings.

Last night I went for a stroll near my home and for the first time this year my senses were assaulted with the beautiful aromas of the gardens – of blossoming plants mixed with a faint aroma of smoke from a barbeque and fresh laundry drying outside (probably also for the first time this year). It’s an intense and heady mixture of late spring and incoming summer aromas – a promise of warm evenings spent with friends in the garden, picnics in the park and out-of-town escapes. The best time of the year – you can smell it in the air and you can feel it’s coming but it’s not here yet, so the whole summer is still in front of you…

So here, if you haven’t yet had your obligatory bottle of rosé this year, you may as well follow in my footsteps and start the season with the same one I had when I got back from my walk:

Clos Bellane, ‘Altitude’, Cotes du Rhone, Rosé, 2015

This is as perfumed as a May garden, intense and heady with aromas of rose water, candied rose petals, cherry drops and ripe strawberries and a whiff of citrus. However while the nose promises something sweet the palate is really dry and light with more citrus and much restrained red berry flavours. The long finish is clean, crisp and refreshing.